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Comment by c0achmcguirk | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why this is on the front page of Hacker News but I'm not hating it.

I moved from Omaha to the Denver/Boulder area two years ago and besides the Henry Doorly Zoo, I miss Nebraska Furniture Mart the most.

NFM is a great place to buy pretty much anything you want to put in your house. Mrs. B really knew how to make a business work. The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business.

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> It's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business.

Without knowing any details, I would say that there are people who would argue that this attitude may be one of the reasons they are profitable. Why change a perfectly working system your customer does have no direct interaction with?

Not to mention they've had 50yr to refine their process.

I guess tech can be overrated. Mrs B couldn't read of write but knew all the carpet prices and could give you a quote on a say 10x7 piece off the top of her head. Buffett who bought the store never used a computer at work to trade stocks or otherwise but would be the worlds richest man, more than Bezos if he hadn't given about half to charity. He can also quote most financials from memory.

> Why change a perfectly working system your customer does have no direct interaction with?

Because you can't buy replacement parts when something breaks?

Seems like you're making quite the leap in assuming they can't buy effective replacement parts.

I'm proposing a reason, that's all. I imagine whatever antiquated electronics they use are readily available at their scale on eBay. Like if I want a Commodore 64 for some reason, I can probably have one tomorrow. But if I need a thousand of them, that will be more difficult. Compare that to AWS, where if I need a thousand of their computers I can have them in 20 minutes.

Repairability is one of the defining qualities of “old stuff”

only the "old stuff" that survived. all the other "old stuff" (which is most of it) is in a landfill because it was irreparable.

Of course, as is only natural.

Why change stuff that survived?

Why use old fashioned machines with buttons (which will become muscle memory in a few months) when you can have a buggy, unresponsive and ever changing touchscreen with poor UX?

Because the new system has a sales guy who slyly bribed the right executive, and the other executives don't know why they should defend old tech.

It's obviously impossible to be profitable without using serverless javascript lambadas hosted on aws running node on docker with cassandra in a completely polyglot environment. I mean that stack pretty much prints money, unlike the 1970s technology.

> The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business.

I live near and have shopped at the largest of their locations many times and all of their associates carry tablets to close sales right there on the floor. Hardly 70s technology (though the UI they use isn't modern necessarily). Their online presence isn't anything scoff at either.

They also have those auto-updating e-ink price tags on everything.

Perhaps that illustrates just how little value we've really added during the last few decades of "improving" business systems...

I derive great value from ordering online and picking up in store, as well as stores that show me inventory and item location.

And yet, theirs can, and does!

I doubt they are doing it with 70s technology. The point of my comment was to demonstrate the improvements since the 70s have added a lot of value to customers, especially the fact that I can compare prices around the nation and even world within minutes.

Catalogues weren't much different many years ago. The fact that sears totally missed the boat on e-commerce is nothing short of astounding.

I grew up in Omaha and there was a time when most of my parents' furniture came from NFM. I remember walking through as a kid, testing out bunk beds and dining room sets. When my dad told me about the other Omaha legend, Warren Buffett, he made it relatable by explaining he had so much money he could afford to buy NFM. That was my introduction to Warren Buffett.

The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business.

That's what I always think whenever I'm in a Starbucks and see the drive-through orders appearing on an IBM PC-era 80x25 text display. But hey, if it works, and if it's reliable, and if it doesn't have to talk to too many other systems, why not?

If I were to build a POS system from scratch in 2019, ncurses for the interface would be my top choice, and I can't think of many reasons to pick a GUI toolkit, except if there was a need to show pictures.

I'm guessing that Mrs. B. was smart to stay out of the Denver/Boulder area. The Furniture Wars were fought in those foothills. You can still see the corpses of Weberg and Levits stores all down the interstate. Jake Jabbs took no prisoners.

Now, in addition to Jake's American Furniture Warehouse, there's the whole Furniture Row business holding the territory. Now IKEA is trying to find a way in.

Whole books have been written about the Furniture Wars! It's kind of crazy.

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